After the noon sleep Harmin, Sheritra, a guard and Bakmut made their way through the palm grove to a spot out of sight of the house. The guard took up his post by the path, just out of sight. Bakmut unrolled the mat, set down various games and retired to just within earshot.
Sheritra made herself comfortable. Her senses were still sending her messages of exquisite clarity: every drop of her sweat on this flaming afternoon, the dry rustle of the dusty palms above, the crackle of dead leaves under the mat. A twig pressed against her buttock. Harmin leaned in front of her to pull the games over and a gush of his perfume made her dizzy.
He had tied back his hair with a white ribbon that now lay ribbed across his bare shoulder, and the juxtaposition of blackest black and the dazzling white of the strip of linen made her feel slightly ill. He glanced sideways at her, his eyes smiling.
“What would you like to play today, Princess?” he asked. “Or would you rather lie here and drowse the hours away?”
She watched, bemused, the motions of his fine mouth, the working of his throat as he spoke. “I want to kiss you,” she said.
He chuckled and jerked a ring finger at Bakmut. “Dogs and Jackals perhaps, Highness? Dice? Are you quite well, Sheritra?”
“Yes. No. I feel a little strange, Harmin. Let us play sennet.”
He hesitated, then set the board between their knees, opening a box and shaking out the spools and cones. “Very well. Does your Highness wish to be a spool?”
“No, a cone.” Together they set out the pieces and began throwing the sticks to see who would begin. “Your mother seemed preoccupied this morning,” Sheritra went on. “I do hope there are no family problems looming, Harmin. Is it time for me to go home?”
The question was not serious and he laughed. “Look, you have thrown a one,” he said. “Throw again and begin. There are no family problems, I assure you. Perhaps Mother is affected by this heat.”
“But she loves the heat,” Sheritra objected. “Oh Harmin, a five, a five, a four! You are doing very well. No, I think it is probably my imagination. The heat is getting to me. I need to swim. I wish you had a pool big enough, for I do not fancy the Nile at this time of the year. Excuse me.” She bent and moved one of his pieces forward. “You did not count correctly.”
“I did not want to land on the House of the Net,” he said thickly, and Sheritra glanced up, surprised at his tone. He was swallowing and staring at the board where the god-fisherman had spread his web. “It is an unlucky house.”
“It is more unlucky to cheat!” she teased him, but he did not respond. She took her turn, throwing four ones and a two, and she knew that he was praying to the god of the house on which he wanted to land with an inner intensity that kept her tongue still. Gathering up the sticks he threw, also a one and a two.
“You can move this piece two,” she pointed, “but this one must go to the House of the Fishing Implements.”
Harmin ran a finger along his upper lip. Sheritra saw that he was sweating lightly. “No,” he said in a low voice. “I will move you forward, Sheritra, but I will not move from one unlucky House to another.”
“As you wish,” she replied, “but you will be putting me right on the Beautiful House and all I have to do is jump the water.”
He did not answer. Deftly he exchanged his piece for hers and the game went on, but now he replied to her sallies with grunts, or did not reply at all. He seemed tense, and when, with a stroke of pure good fortune, she threw a number that would allow her to tumble him into the House of the Water, he gave an agonized cry. Her hand paused in mid air, clutching his piece, and his own closed over it. His fingers were cold and slick with sweat. “Not in the Water,” he said huskily. “It is cold and dark there, and hopeless. Please, Sheritra.”
“Harmin, it is only a game,” she said kindly. “We do not play it with spells today, only for amusement. If I do not tip you into the Water I might lose.”
He managed a weak smile. “And you are a very bad loser. I will concede to you, Princess, but do not put me there.”
She shrugged, puzzled and annoyed. “Oh very well. Put it all away and I will dice with you. What stakes do you propose?”
Soon afterwards they left the mat. Sheritra had won at the dicing and Harmin promised to take her on the river after dinner. They parted to sleep away the hottest part of the day, and Sheritra lay on her couch wondering why he had taken the game so much to heart. They had whiled away many hours at sennet, everyone did, but this was the first time it had upset him.
The house did not seem so quiet today. It was full of little whisperings and scutterings, as though it had been suddenly invaded by an army of mice. Although she was both physically exhausted from her broken night and emotionally drained by her desire for Harmin, heightened but not satisfied, she could not sleep.